Bats vs Thunderstorm on radar

[Scott Shaw]

Interesting:

"South Texas can become a BATtleground of nature: bats, that is, caught up in the environment around a large and dangerous thunderstorm. This happened in the early evening of 19 March 2006, as part of a swarm of bats was overtaken by a tornado-warned supercell over eastern Val Verde County and southwestern Edwards County."

Rest of the article here:

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/coolimg/

If the current image isn't about bats, check the bottom of the page for past images.

[graveleye]

very intersting.. the radar loop is phenomenal. You can see the cloud of bats emanating from a single spot - perhaps a cave. I wonder how forested that area is? Maybe the bats found shelter in trees or even on the ground.

[CaverScott]

That is pretty darn cool. Thanks for posting it.

[Vader]

Awesome story

That's a whole new way of locating caves. Just look for the Bats on Radar.

[nathanroser]

A friend of mine at work showed me this, he said that storm killed a very large number of bats in that swarm.

[tncaver]

I would also think that surviving bats caught up in any kind of big storm with high winds could be relocated a long distance away such as from a WNS infected
area to a non infected area possibly even hundreds of miles away. This was hypothesized a couple years ago in Tennessee when one or two bats of a variety never before seen in a particular cave, showed up after a large counter rotating storm which lasted for over a week, had originated in the Northeast and traveled all the way to Kansas, then dropped Southward and came back across Tennessee and back up toward where it originated in the North. That was the same year a so called "jump" was claimed and used as an attempt to blame cavers.

Debris from tornadoes in Alabama and Georgia was recently found in Tennessee. Pictures, letters, newspapers and other objects were found with addresses from towns hundreds of miles away. This documented that storms can send debris and possibly bats or birds long distances in a very short period of time.

The translocation of bats has been documented and may occur due to various means such as ships, trains, planes, cars, trucks and high winds.
Bats from the mainland have been found on islands out in the middle of the ocean hundreds of miles from where they originated.

Recently a bat from Asia was found on a ship in Hawaii.